Relena's Decision
by Zapenstap
Summary: When Heero is shot with a poison dart and dying in the hospital, the decision to end his life is left to Relena.


Relena's Decision

By Zapenstap

Heero knelt on one knee on the balcony above the auditorium stage, crouching easily behind the lights that lit up the slender figure standing straight and tall behind the podium.  He had a handgun tucked in the back of his waistband and his coat hung over the railing because it was hot, baring his arms and shoulders.  He passed a hand over his forehead, swiping away the beads of sweat that clung to his hair and turned his attention back to the girl behind the podium.

Down below, on the other side of the stage and standing in the shadow of the curtain, Wufei Chang was acting a personal bodyguard, arms crossed over his chest, his body a motionless form that was both attentive and uncompromising.  He never blinked.  Wufei cared very little for Relena generally, but he did his duty as well as any of them.  Quatre was in the audience, as a delegate not a bodyguard, his blonde head sticking out among the swarm of Maguanac bodyguards that accompanied him anywhere there might be danger.  Trowa was at home.  Duo was in the Colonies.  Zechs and Noin were in Space.

Heero watched Relena, barely able to make out her expressions from this height.  She had her hair twisted up behind her head in a French roll.  She was dressed in gray business trousers with a matching coat and a silk, white collared shirt.  She was trim and poised.  Her gestures were natural, her eyes hard as iron, but her expression warm and welcoming.  When Relena entered into the conclusion of her speech, Heero caught the feel of danger in the air.

Instantly he became alert, his eyes sweeping the figures gathered in the audience, raising himself to the balls of his feet in preparation to bolt in whatever direction necessary.  From the audience, Quatre was looking around, a puzzled expression on his face.  Wufei had lowered his arms, his brows narrowed in consternation.  The Chinese man whispered to the people standing on guard in the darkness behind him and the whispers traveled until all the security in the building was riled with agitation.  Relena paused briefly in her speech, catching the currents around her, but only for a hint of a second that barely registered before continuing smoothly on. 

Heero was just getting ready to head for the stairs and get on the ground floor nearer her when he felt a sharp pain penetrate his shoulder.  Grunting, he ducked, glancing quickly at his arm.  It wasn't a bullet.  Instead, his fingers gripped a dart, a tiny dart no larger than one digit on his littlest finger.  Heero glanced up, sweeping the scaffolds, the crowd in the audience.  Relena spoke on.  In the audience, Quatre was staring straight at him, and a moment later he saw Wufei's head turn his way.

Heero plucked the dart out of his arm, but that was all he had time for.  Almost immediately his worldview swirled, his vision blurring.  Sound and sensation became strangely distant.  He tried to stumble to his feet, but all he felt was the cold hard, metal floor panels rising to meet his right cheek.  The sound of his boots thudding against the floor as his body fell heavily assaulted his own ears.  He became vaguely aware that his hands were flat on the ground by his face and that he couldn't seem to control his movements.  The pain came suddenly, as if all the veins in his body were being squeezed shut.  He gasped in sudden realization, but his muscles were numb and no sounds escaped.  He was fighting alone.

*****

"What has happened?"  Relena cried, keeping her anxiety as clouded as she could, one fist clutched to her chest to manually slow the beating of her heart.  The delegates were filing out of the auditorium, unaware of any disturbance.  They had stopped her to applaud her speech but she begged off on occasion of an emergency.  Security was buzzing around the building like a hive of angry bees.

She spotted Quatre coming toward her and moved in his direction, knowing she must look a little wild about the eyes.  Quatre caught her by the shoulders, staring into her face for several seconds.

"What has happened?" she said again, barely managing to keep her voice down.  Most of the main lobby was emptied, but some people remained, and they were watching her beginning to panic with interest.  Stubbornly, she set her face while the Maguanacs surrounded Relena and Quatre without being asked, forming a shield between them and the rest of the crowd.  Relena swallowed, knowing there was fear in her face now.  Quatre's blue eyes loomed in front of her, and she could see little beyond them.  "Quatre, tell me, please.  Something has happened.  I can feel it.  Wufei disappeared almost before I was finished."

"I think it's Heero," Quatre said, and for a moment he seemed to be looking not at her but at something she couldn't see.  "I felt something…strange, just a moment ago."  He blinked and his vision refocused.  "And then I saw him vanish from his post on the balcony. Wufei saw it too."

Relena swallowed and masked a slight shudder passing through her body.  A moment later they both caught the sound of ambulance sirens wailing outside. Relena heart hardened like a stone and she turned, but again Quatre caught her shoulders, slowing her down.  Somewhere between the war and now he had grown several inches taller than she, and managed to direct her movements with ease.  Graciously, she allowed herself to be guided, slipping easily into the role of the refined lady-like career woman that appealed to both aristocratic representatives of Romafeller and the general public.  

Out of the doors leading to the catwalks, Wufei burst into the lobby.  He walked awkwardly under a heavy weight, his face expressionless but his eyes determined.  Relena nearly cried out in alarm.  He was carrying Heero like a limp doll on his back, the head of the Japanese soldier slumped over Wufei's right shoulder.  

Relena's throat closed up and her stomach cramped, but she managed to shout raggedly through the blockage.  "Heero!  Wufei, what happened?"

As soon as he was through the door, Wufei passed Heero's body off to two other Preventors and approached Relena and Quatre with a somber expression.  Medics burst into the room, scattering the remaining people who were lingering in the hall.  Relena's eyes followed the medics and latched onto Heero. The medics bore with them a stretcher, onto which Heero was lifted in one fluid motion.  Once lying prone on his back, Heero made blessed signs of movement; eyes squeezed shut as his body shook with violent tremors.  He was alive, but…

"Oh, God," Relena said.  She rushed toward the stretcher, but Wufei imperiously blocked her path with one arm flung out before her.

"He's been poisoned," Wufei said in a straight, even voice. "Shot with a dart from the shadows."  

"Let them take him to the hospital, Miss Relena," Quatre implored.  "You don't want to delay his getting to a hospital."

Relena's heart thudded violently in her chest, but she stopped, swallowing, butterflies beating their wings against the tender insides of her stomach.  She watched the stretcher bearing Heero's body roll away, watched as it was loaded into the back of an ambulance.  

"I have to follow him," she said. "Peygan!  Peygan?"

The desperate call was answered Peygan appeared in an almost irrational way.  Absent-mindedly, Relena concluded that he must have known what happened and expected her to call for him.  "Your transportation is waiting for you, Miss Relena," the old man said with his usual respect and deference.

            "Thank you," Relena replied. 

"Relena, there will be reporters," Quatre protested.

"Not to mention that our assignment isn't through," Wufei added stoically.  "You could still be in danger." 

"I'm more concerned about Heero," she said without looking back.

Quatre and Wufei exchanged glances and followed her silently out to the parking lot.  As Quatre predicted, outside the building, the press swarmed them.  

"Miss Darilan, could you please comment on your speech today?"

"Vice Foreign Minister, who was the young man taken away in an ambulance?"

"Miss Relena Peacecraft…"

Waving away the microphones, Relena fought through the crowd with Wufei and Quatre's help.  Peygan opened to door to her limo and Quatre and Relena piled into the back.  Wufei sat in the front seat beside Peygan.  The press swarmed around the car, questions flying at their ears as hands beat on the windows and doors.  

Relena sat rigidly on her seat.

Heero.  Poisoned.

He was supposed to be the one protecting her, not the other way around, but she was responsible for him on this assignment, responsible for all the people she paid to have protecting her.  And it wasn't just that.  It was Heero.  It was Heero and she was terrified.

"Do you know what kind of poison it was, Wufei?" she asked, unable to sit in silence.  She grasped the back of his chair with her slender fingers.  "Is there an antidote?  Will he be all right?"

"I didn't recognize it just from what I saw," Wufei said in a quiet, controlled voice.  He sat in the front seat like the blade of a knife, stiff, subtle and deadly.  "We'll wait for the test results.  All I found was Heero on the floor and the dart."

"Who would have poisoned Heero, though?"  Quatre asked in a voice barely suppressing emotion.  His eyes were glowing like blue fire with angry curiosity.  "He was there to protect Miss Relena.  It doesn't make any sense."

"I almost don't care who shot him," Relena said in low tones. "We'll find out soon enough.  What I want to know is what is going to happen to Heero."

"Well," Wufei murmured, giving her a sly, almost insulting glance.  "He's not dead yet, and the matter of who is responsible is being looked into.  Just sit tight and be calm.  We can't do anything except wait."

"Call Lady Une," Relena said.  "Call the hospital.  Tell them that he is coming, what has happened.  Tell them to please do everything they can under my authority." 

Wufei looked almost offended.  "That's already been done."

Sitting back, Relena told herself to stay calm, relaxing her hands on her lap, but she couldn't let her fears go.  Quatre looked at her sympathetically and Relena refused to meet his eyes for fear that she would cry.  She knew that Quatre knew how she felt about Heero, though he never said anything about it.  He probably knew better than she did.

At the hospital, Heero was wheeled into the emergency room.  Peygan let them out of the car almost on the heels of the ambulance and Relena strained to see the stretcher as Heero was lifted and carried into the hospital.  With Quatre and Wufei at her side, she followed.  She caught only glimpses of his face as doctors and nurses surrounded the stretcher, a slack, sweating face half shrouded in his wild, dark hair. 

She was slowed by the medical staff as Heero was carried to an operating room and hooked up to all manners of devices that beeped and blared and pumped foreign substances into his bloodstream.  An oxygen mask was fitted over his face, an IV inserted into his arm, and tubes connected to a variety of machines crisscrossed his body.  Relena saw it from a window in the hallway only briefly before she was told very firmly by the reigning doctor to get out of the way.  Doctors came and went carrying samples of his blood, one with the dart sealed in a bag.

"Come on, Relena," Quatre urged.  "We can't be here."  

Wufei said nothing.

Lady Une met Relena and her Gundam Pilot escorts in the hospital waiting room.  She held a clipboard in one hand and sported a headset.  People in the room shrank back and walked small, confronted by her authoritarian presence.  Some recognized her Preventor's jacket, but most just sense an ex-OZ officer on deck.

"Well?" Relena demanded, ignoring the looks of the other people in the room.  

"The poison is unknown," Lady Une said.  "It's some kind of contained virus, not a lethal agent, but it still should have killed him quickly.  Yet he's managed to survive the initial effects.  We have the best doctors available to help him fight it, but as far as we know, there is no cure."

Relena turned her face away, biting her lip, but she refused to sit down, to bend her back.  "What's the likelihood that he will survive?" she asked as logically and severely as she could.  

Lady Une lowered her clipboard in a dropping, telltale manner.  Her face broke out in an expression of worry and sorrow.  

Relena's heart clenched.  "I won't accept that!" she said.  Then, more calmly, "Lady Une, please tell me what I can expect, what I need to know."

Lady Une turned her face away, her dark hair hiding her face.  When she looked back her emotions were cloaked by a firm and commanding face and voice that had received practice hardening during all those years as a commanding officer.  

"Relena," Lady Une said, "the medical staff here will fight the virus as long as there is any hope of Heero recovering, but you should know that Heero is licensed under your authority for protecting you during this assignment, not mine.  As far as the hospital staff is concerned, they will keep him alive until you tell them to stop."  She paused.  "I should tell you that it doesn't look good, Relena.  It doesn't look good.  If the time comes and there is nothing to be done, you will have to make the decision."

Relena fled from the thought.  Swallowing, she straightened her shoulders.  "Tell them to do everything they can," she said deliberately, authoritatively.  "Tell them to spare no expense in trying to cure him.  I will pay anything."

"Relena," Lady Une began.

Relena's face remained straight.  "Tell them."

Lady Une made a stiff, jerky movement that was something like a bow and strode away.

"You can't stop death," Wufei said from behind her left shoulder.  "Heero's a soldier.  He knew the risks of protecting you.  He knows the risks of just being who he is.  You can't just hope he'll get better."

Relena raised her hands to her own slim throat and massaged her neck and shoulders.  She closed her eyes briefly to still the tears and tried to smile at Wufei.  "I know who he is," she said.  "But I will believe that he can survive this. "

            Quatre sighed, looking down at his feet.  "I know how you feel, Miss Relena," he said imploringly.  "But…You might have to face facts.  Heero might be dying in there.  You should know what you're up against.  You have to know you're enemy if you're going to stand a chance."

Tears burned hot in her eyes and her head began to ache with the pulse of them but Relena took a deep breath and managed with only a little waver in her voice to respond.  "You've fought losing battles before and won."

Quatre smiled at her.  "Not always, but I know what you mean.  I'm not saying you should give up now, just that you should be prepared.  A soldier can't fight expecting to survive.  What losing battles we won, we won because we were not afraid to die and the enemy was. A sickness, a poison isn't the same kind of enemy."

Relena nodded curtly, her head bobbing like it was on a spring, but her heart was not in it.  She wouldn't see Heero die today; she couldn't conceive of it.   "I can't wait in this room," she said after a moment.  "I need to see him.  Quatre, if he's going to die…" She choked on the word.  "I think my presence will help.  I need to see him."

"They won't let you in," Wufei told her.  He was sitting on a bench with one ankle crossed over his knee and both arms crossed over his chest.

"I need to see him," she repeated. 

Relena left the waiting room, striding out through the swinging doors, but as she left she heard Wufei mutter to Quatre, "I can't believe she's still in love with him. He doesn't care about her that way."

The door closed behind her and Relena's momentum slowed to a stop.

A choking sob escaped her throat and she quickly covered her eyes.  Just outside the waiting room she slumped against the wall in a wave of dizziness, sinking to a crouch, huddling in the corner by the door.  She stayed there for a moment, tears obscuring her vision, ignoring the people passing by her with concern on their faces.  Then, wiping the tears away from her eyes, she stumbled again to her feet and walked down the hall with more purpose to her stride.  She remembered that her hair was done, that she wore the finest of designer business suits, that she was the Vice Foreign Minister liaison between the Colonies and Planet Earth.   She was Relena Peacecraft and if Heero's life could be saved, she would save it.  It didn't matter how he felt about her.  

The doctors started when they saw her coming.  A dark-haired nurse stopped her outside the operating room with a clipboard.

"I'm afraid we can't have you in here, Miss."

"Vice Foreign Minister Relena Peacecraft," she corrected his address.  "I won't interfere."

Surprise dawned in the eyes of the dark-haired nurse and she let her in reluctantly, but with a sureness that spoke of a twinge of awe and respect, if not even fear.  Relena hardly gave her another glance. Her eyes were reaching for Heero's body to cling to and in two steps she was through the door.

Heero was laid out on a table, still dressed in his jeans and boots and green tank top.  It was hard on her heart to see him like that, normally outfitted and staying alive—it seemed—only because he was connected to machines by plastic tubes and an oxygen mask.  His body was no longer the limp form Wufei had carried out of the auditorium.  His muscles were tense now, clenched as if entering post mortem early and sweat beaded beneath his hairline and dripped down his face.  His skin looked hot and flushed, as if the blood in his veins was boiling, but his face was pale, his lips discolored.

Relena lost some of her balance staring at him.  She wanted to speak to him, but with eyes clenched shut like that and his hands balled up into fists, his back arching on the table, she wasn't sure he would be able to hear her.   

"What is she doing in here?" one of the doctors demanded.

The dark-haired nurse opened and closed her mouth soundlessly.  Someone else identified the strange woman in the operating room.  Relena ignored all of it.

The doctors were lifting plastic pouches filled with strange fluids and hovering over Heero's still form.  The underside of his arm was exposed, dabbed with iodine, blood drawn from the artery.  The area under his eyes was beginning to look shaded, bruised, and every so often he jerked in pain, muscles cramping even tighter.

Relena came to herself when she felt tears on her cheeks, and dashed them away violently.  "What is it?" she asked.  "What has he been poisoned with?"

"We don't know," one of the doctors muttered.  "We can't identify it.  You really need to leave, Vice Foreign Minister.  I see that this young man is important to you, but you can't help by standing here."

"Is he going to live?" she asked, barely able to form the question.

"It's too early to say.  We've done all we can for him for the time being.  We're waiting to see if he stabilizes.  We're researching the poison in his blood.  After a few tests there may be something new to try.  Now please, we can't have you in here.  He needs to rest."

Relena stared at Heero's form as the doctors began to file out one by one, having other patients to attend to.  She remained a moment longer, tears sparkling on her cheeks with a bitter saltiness, staring at Heero lying there, nearer to death than she had ever seen him and beyond the reach of her voice.

"I won't let you die, Heero," she told him anyway.  "I've believed in you this far. I want you to fight this time.  Please, Heero.  You have to fight."

The doctor gently took her elbow and led her firmly out of the room.

Sally Po had joined Quatre in the hallway just outside the operating room.  The former officer and medical examiner for the Alliance was in deep conversation with one of the doctors who had exited the room.  By her expression, whatever they were discussing did not seem good.  Relena could read the subtle lines around Sally's eyes and mouth, the way her shoulders seemed to slump a little.  Her eyes were focused on the doctor's face, drinking the words in realistically, and with each word her forehead creased a little.

Quatre saw Relena coming and touched Sally's sleeve.  The doctor murmured something as Sally turned and left them both in the hallway.  Sally opened her mouth to speak, but Relena turned her eyes away, not wanting to hear what she was going to say.  Distracted, she began taking her hair down, letting the mass of blonde locks fall haphazardly around her head, some of it caught up in tangles and hairspray.  Hairpins showered on the floor like pebbles, clicking metallically.  Some of them remained stuck in her hair, but for a brief moment, she felt less tight inside.

"Relena," Sally said gently.  The Chinese woman's eyes drifted to the window that looked into Heero's room and then back at Relena's face.  "Relena."

"Don't tell me, Sally.  I'm not giving up hope yet."

Sally took a deep breath.  "Relena, you're not someone given to these kinds of illusions.  From what the doctors are telling me, it's only a matter of time..."

Relena shook her head.  "No.  They say he's resting, but I know he's fighting in there.  He's stronger than they think…"

Sally interrupted. "I know how strong Heero is, Relena, but you have to at least consider the possibilities"

The words cut her.  Relena said nothing more.  Inside, she felt numb, the beginnings of grief stirring a pile of ashes.  She couldn't handle this.  Not this…  Her father died the same way, on a table, a victim.  Not Heero too.

Relena realized after a moment that she was sitting on a white bench in a hallway away from Heero's room next to Quatre, who was holding her gently by the arms.  Sally sat on the other side of her, stroking her hair.

"Maybe you should sleep, Relena," Quatre said.  "He's not gone yet, and it will do you good."

"If he dies while I rest I would never forgive myself," Relena said bitterly.  "Can't they do _anything?"_

"Not without further endangering his life," Sally said gravely.  "The body can only take so much human intervention.  He's hanging by a thread now.  They don't think he'll last the night."

Those words were like the deep rings of gongs or the mournful cries of Church bells.  Pondering them, Relena sank within herself, her eyes glossing over.  Time ticked slowly by with no improvement, and little word.

Three hours later, Quatre was asleep on Sally's shoulder and Relena sat alone on the end of the bench.  Her hair was tousled and tangled around her head, her mascara smeared by her tears and her face streaked.  With her feet propped up on the bench, she hardly thought about it, and was only thankful that Lady Une had prevented the press from entering the hospital.

Near midnight Heero was still alive, but the doctors, seeing the hope still in her eyes, had less and less to say to her.  After awhile, Relena fell completely silent, waiting for she knew not what.  When Wufei came striding up the hallway, she hardly noticed.  Sally sat up to receive him as Relena continued to stare in the direction of Heero's room.  A feeling like desperation wormed through her, relentlessly gnawing.  She wondered if it was the feeling Heero felt, beneath the pain of the poison that was slowly killing him.  Fruitlessly, she tried to think what Heero would do if she were the one dying.  Heero would take any measure to complete a given task.

"We caught the man who shot him," Wufei was telling Sally.  "Just a rogue member of the Mariemaia uprising who once idolized Heero Yuy as a model soldier and now despises him.  They were never after Relena.  He was good, I'll give him that, but he worked alone."

"Do we know what poison he used?"  

Relena began listening.

"Yeah," Wufei said.  "The staff has been informed, but it makes no difference.  There's no cure for it." Wufei glanced at Relena as if to see how she was taking the news. "They say there's really nothing anybody can do. Anything that would help would only kill him faster."

Relena remembered that when her father had died, she had demanded that they take him to a real hospital and had been denied. If they had, would her father still be alive today?  It had been too dangerous, they said, because of OZ.

Even as she was thinking about it, four doctors—three men and one woman, the best in the business—came around the corner in an entourage of medical authority.  Their long white hospital coats flapped behind their heels, pristine white collars starched crisp.  Here, _they were the important people, the authorities, but they stopped before Relena respectfully, somberly._

Relena's knees were weak, as if filled with water.  As she stood, she could hardly hold up her own weight.

"He's dying," the oldest doctor said. 

Behind her, Quatre raised his head, eyes shimmering now. Wufei looked away.  Sally said nothing.

Relena stood silently, mouth slightly parted.  They wanted her to make a decision.  She knew that they were waiting for her to tell them to shut off the machines, to use their talents to save the life of somebody else in this hospital, to ease Heero's death now so that he might die more peacefully.  The decision, Lady Une had said, lay with her.  The doctors were saying that their only choices now were to keep him breathing a little longer in pain or let him rest at last.

"Can I speak to him?" Relena asked in a voice that sounded too quiet to be her own.

The doctors shared a glance between them.  "You may say goodbye," the oldest doctor said.  She knew they were trying to be kind, but she also knew they were only letting her do it because they believed it was psychologically important for her, not because they thought it would do Heero any good.  Instinctively, Relena knew that they were probably right.  But there were things she had to say.

Sally, Quatre and Wufei remained behind as Relena was led to Heero's room.  She could see in their eyes that they did not want to say goodbye to Heero, that as soldiers they would remember him as he was before, and wish him well wherever he was going, wherever all the others had gone before him.

The woman doctor pushed open the door to the emergency ward softly, giving Relena a significant look.  "When you're through," she said in a soft voice, "tell us what you decide."  No further pressure was put on her, but it was enough.  

Relena entered the room alone, once again confronting a comatose Heero lying on the bed, his breathing controlled by a machine, shallow, but steady.  His heart rate was monitored by another machine, as was the dripping liquid being measured into his bloodstream.  His hair was slick with sweat now, his face obscured by the tubes in his nose.   The bubble mask had been removed from his mouth.  His eyes were closed, his skin stretched and pale, his clean, strong limbs lying stiff and weak beside his body.  In the time since she had seen him last, the doctors had removed his clothes, covering only part of his body with a thin sheet.  Relena stared at that body with a strange consternation, realizing suddenly why she was hurting so deeply.  She had dreamed of seeing him like this, but not like this, not on that bed with those tubes and his eyes shut.

Ignoring the tears now, Relena circled the bed and knelt by his side, clasping his right hand in both of her own.  Even like this, he looked so strong to her.

"Heero," she whispered, and the tears came on top of the word, bursting from the dam she had built to contain them and flooding over her cheeks.  She wanted to tell him that she didn't want him to die, but she couldn't say it, couldn't let him think that she even though for a moment that he would.

"Heero," she said.  "I love you."

He couldn't hear her and she knew it, but now that it was out there she said it again, and then one more time to confirm it to herself in his presence.  Tears trickled out of her eyes as she breathed those words, the words she refused to admit even to herself because it seemed to foolish and impossible.  "I love you.  I love you."  It was hard to even distinguish her own words, and on the last she let her head fall on the mattress beneath his body, soaking the sheets in her tears, squeezing his hand for her own comfort.  When she lifted her head, she reached up with one hand to swipe the sweat away from his brow, and then gently caressed his face as she had always wanted to do.  She understood now, on a level that was so clear the sharpness of it was physically painful.  Even in his present condition, he looked suddenly beautiful to her.  He was alive, and fighting, at least for a bit longer.  

She stood slowly and deliberately leaned over him.  She touched his face again, with both of her hands, and repeated what she said before, and then told him how much she had always believed in him, how much he meant to her.   When there seemed to be nothing more to say, she kissed him softly on the lips, knowing that it couldn't be a real kiss, not when he couldn't return it.  She half hoped that such a kiss would revive him, like in a fairytale, but he remained unaware of her when she lifted her face.  Even so, she savored the taste of him as she rose, touching his skin again lightly, her brows knit in consternation. 

For several moments, she stared at him in silence, not knowing what else to do.

When she finally pulled away, Heero stiffened.  He groaned, his body tightening with a shuddering spasm.  The heart monitor went crazy, the lines rising and falling jaggedly up and down.  Heero shook his head, tossing it from side to side wildly, his fingers splaying and flailing.  Relena caught her breath in alarm, jumping backward, feeling her own heart race in response to his sudden movements.

In those moments of watching him thrash, Relena quite suddenly made her decision, and the force of it was enough to make her feel suddenly displaced in time and space.

The doctors burst into the room, reading the machines, adjusting the dosage of whatever it was they were giving him to keep him stabilized.  Heero quieted a little under their ministration, his teeth clenched and his lips pulled back. He thrashed more quietly and then became still again.

"Well, Vice Minister?" one of the doctors demanded.  "He's fading fast."

Relena's face was frozen stiff.  The air in the room seemed to have vanished, sucked out until her lungs were sure to collapse.  "I've made my decision," she said.  Her voice echoed in the small space of a hollow room.

They looked up, pausing in their tasks, waiting for her to voice it, waiting for her to tell them they could let him die now.  The woman stopped fiddling with the IV as she looked over her shoulder at Relena.

"I've decided that's he's going to live," she said calmly.

The older doctor raised his head slowly, amazement creasing his faith, his mouth slightly parted.  The woman's eyes were wide, like teacups.  The other two doctors exchanged glances.

Relena did not smile at them.  She clasped her hands in front of her and met them each in the eye with a level look.  It was Heero who taught her that sometimes sacrifices had to be made to get the job done.  "He is stronger than you think," she told them crisply.  "And I believe that he has the will to survive.  Therefore you will stop at nothing to save him."

The woman doctor's jaw hung slack as she stared at Relena as if seeing a wraith or a spirit.  Relena knew well the voice she spoke with, that commanding authority which motivated entire nations, and she could feel the wheels turning in their heads, the energy pumping through their hearts as their souls rang with her conviction.  "There are other poisons that could possibly counteract…" the woman began hesitantly.  "But it is unlikely that such measures will…"

Relena's eyes turned on her like disks of ice. "You will hack off, remove, dose, replace or poison anything if it that has a chance of saving him.  I want to make it perfectly clear that there are no boundaries you may not cross.  Heery Yuy will leave this room alive.  If he doesn't…" She bit her tongue, leaving something of an empty threat in the air.  She remembered how the gun felt in her hands, the one she had held against the doctors in whose presence her father died before they injected her with a sedative.  She had been about to say "if he doesn't, you won't either," but of course she could not really follow through on that.  Even so, they seemed to understand.  Their eyes widened as they grasped how serious she was, and if not a gun perhaps they thought of other things that she could do, things her power allowed her to do if she chose to do it.  She wouldn't, of course, but they didn't know that.  

She looked at Heero then, for resolve, for strength, for love.  He was breathing still, but the shadows under his eyes were deeper, like death was preparing him for the grave.  But death would have to fight her too.  She wouldn't just let him go.  He had fought too hard and too long for life to give in now, and she believed in him, believed with all the power and love that was in her heart.

"He will leave this room alive," she said curtly.

Relena walked out of the Operating Room.

When she stepped out into the hall, Wufei, Sally and Quatre were staring at her as if they had never quite seen her before.  The door was open and they had heard everything. Quatre and Sally were speechless, shocked beyond the ability to form words, but after a moment, Wufei smirked at her.  Relena almost smiled back, if she felt she could smile again.  A glimmer of respect flashed through Wufei's eyes, as if he were telling her "that's right, make them work to prove their integrity."  In that moment, she realized she had finally earned Wufei's respect, simply by accepting no compromises on something that was truly important to her, Heero's life. 

"Relena," Sally said at last.  "Do you realize what you've done?"

"He'll recover, Sally," she said.  "He can take it.  If he doesn't, it's no worse than before, but I'm confident that he will."

Quatre stared at her a moment, then shook his head with a smile.  "You're really something, Relena, you know that?"

"No," she said.  "I'm nobody special.  And I'm tired.  I wish to sleep now."

Relena slept in the waiting room and woke up four hours after she had dosed off on a line of chairs drawn together to make a couch.  She wasn't sure what had awoken her.  It was four in the morning and though the hospital never slept, things seemed quieter.  She was cold and still exhausted, but she knew she couldn't go back to sleep.  She almost felt as if a voice had awoken her.

Heero.

Was he still alive and calling or her or had that been his ghost brushing her cheek?

Getting up, Relena slung a hospital blanket around her shoulders and padded quietly through the halls.  The floors glistened under her feet, mopped since she last passed through.  She saw only one nurse passing through the halls from one room to another, but he did not turn to look her way.

At length, she found herself at Heero's ward, and entered without knocking.

Heero was still lying on the hospital table, still connected to the IV and the heart monitor.  He was lying quietly, as if asleep, his face more peaceful than she remembered seeing it in a long time.  The room was very quiet.  It took her a moment to realize that no sound came from any of the machines in the room.

Wrapping the blanket tighter around her shoulders, Relena approached Heero's bedside. Reaching out a hand, she touched his forehead, swiping the bangs away from his face.  Sweat still covered his skin, but he was cooler than before, as if the heat had gone out of him.

Then he opened his eyes.

Relena gasped in amazement and alarm as he reached out a hand and grasped her wrist in a light, but firm grip.  His eyes were dark and alive, like the ocean or a storm, and they caught and held her motionless as she paused, half leaning over him.  In their darkness she saw turmoil, the waves of a thrashing sea or the roiling of dark clouds, but it was a fighting spirit that she saw, revived and energized with victory.

"The fever broke," she said in sudden understanding.

Heero turned his head away from her to look at the machines.  "I couldn't sleep with them on," he said.  "I'm very tired."

"You turned them off?" she whispered, and he smiled at her.

"I don't know what you did," he told her.  "I think I was dying.  I don't know how they saved me.  I thought for sure…" He trailed off.

Relena swallowed.  Her heart was so full she wondered if she must be dreaming.  "Did I do the right thing, Heero?  I told them to do anything to save you. They gave you other poisons, or drugs, something that should have killed you, but I…"

His eyes swung back to her and with the same hand that had held her wrist he gently touched her face, brushing her cheek with the back of his index finger.  "You did the right thing," he said, and then dropped his hand, turning away from her as he settled back against the pillows propped under her shoulders.  "I want to be alive.  I needed help this time.  I'm not better yet, but I will be."

He was still weak.  She could tell by the way his arms seemed to sink lethargically into the mattress.  He couldn't seem to move much, but he was alert and certain that he would recover.

"Heero," she said, and the joy in her voice was almost a choke of relief.

A dark shape blotted out the light of the corridor.

"Come in, Wufei," Heero said, and the Chinese warrior ducked inside at his behest.

"So I see it worked," Wufei murmured.  "I'll be glad to tell the others."

Heero glanced at him, but gave no indication as to what he thought of this. 

"They'll want to know right away," Wufei said.  "Sally's waiting for a report every hour."

"Who was it?" Heero asked him as Wufei turned to leave.

Wufei smirked.  "Oh, don't worry about that.  We got him.  You just take your time recovering. If you don't, your little princess's mighty efforts on your behalf will be spoiled." 

When Wufei left, Heero turned his attention back to Relena.  For a long while he said nothing, and then looked at her and asked a single question. "Why?"

Relena understood immediately, and for answer all she could do was look at him, plainly, unable to mask anything she felt or thought or desired.  Heero waited for a response with patience, and then puzzlement, and at last a slow flicker of realization flamed in his eyes. 

Relena smiled a wavering smile, shaking all throughout her body.  She couldn't speak or explain or do anything except smile at him the same way she had smiled at him in the past a hundred times.  She had never seen him thrown so off balance, his eyes wide and tense at the corners, his mouth slightly parted.  Neither of them spoke, not having the right words, but at length Relena leaned forward, drawing herself close to Heero's face the same way he had drawn her close on his last mission in the Wing Zero, when he left her after Libra.  She had no words to speak to him, no explanations or encouragement to give about war or his purpose in life, save one.  For this, she kissed him softly, the same way she had when he could not feel it, and this time he responded, almost as if he remembered.  Briefly, and then she pulled away, overcome with emotions too long buried.

"Get better," she implored, and vanished from the room.

When the doctors came they found their patient sitting up with the IV manually removed and the machines turned off when they had expected to find a corpse.  The woman doctor exclaimed that it was impossible.  The older doctor merely shook his head in amazement at the uncanny strength of this young man who didn't look to be anything very special.  

The patient spoke few words to the medical staff, but he seemed adamant at getting rest and nourishment so that he could leave the hospital in good health.  If he hadn't felt so suddenly weak, he said, he would have left on his own already.  He had places he'd rather be.

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